ArmInfo. The Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin, freed from prison in Baku, on his page in Facenook told about the Azerbaijani plan for his exchange with two saboteurs Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilham Askerov, who in 2014 killed several people in Karabakh, who were caught and sentenced to life imprisonment in Artsakh.
<In February 2017 the Azerbaijani authorities appealed to the Russian Federation with a proposal to assist in the exchange of me for two Azerbaijani citizens, Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilham Askerov. These two figures in Azeri-media are only tourists who decided to visit the graves of their relatives in the territory of Karabakh controlled by Armenians. Peaceful "tourists" who came from Azerbaijan, incidentally with Kalashnikov assault rifles. Azerbaijan tried to blackmail Russia by saying that facilitating the release of two "saboteur tourists" in the negotiations with Armenia will speed up the release of blogger Alexander Lapshin," the blogger wrote on his Facebook page.
According to Lapshin, Baku had to abandon this idea after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed his bewilderment at the offer of exchange. "According to a very high person from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, this situation left Sergei Lavrov personally and, as a result, Azerbaijan was sent a forest with this proposal. The Russians at all could not understand and accept how Russian/Israeli citizen Lapshin relates to Azeri saboteurs. And most importantly, why should Armenia, whose citizen I am not, issue murderers for me from prison? A little later, this situation was brought to the Israeli authorities, who were also outraged by the position of Azerbaijan. But unlike the Russian Federation, dissatisfaction was expressed on the sidelines," said Alexander Lapshin.
Lapshin was arrested in Azerbaijan at the request of Azerbaijan and extradited to Baku because of his visit to Artsakh. Later, he was released by the decision of the President of Azerbaijan Republic Aliyev.